Wikimedia Australia is looking for experienced Wikipedians to help out at training sessions across New South Wales, in particular in Newcastle, Wollongong, Port Macquarie and in Parkes. If you're interested, the details are at the following link:
In the media: Jimmy Wales is not an Internet billionaire; a mass shooter's alleged Wikipedia editing Amy Chozick's profile of Jimmy Wales in the New York Times sparked significant controversy in international news outlets this week. Chozick's profile covered Wales's personal life, including his 12-year-old daughter, ex-wife, and current wife Kate Garvey, describing Wales himself as "a well-groomed version of a person who has been slumped over a computer drinking Yoo-hoo for hours." Chozick described his current role in Wikipedia as "Benevolent Dictator for Life", a statement which garnered conflict from all corners of the web, including from Wales, who responded to the piece as a whole with a lengthy talk page statement.
Featured content: Queen of France Four articles, four lists, and fifteen pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.
WikiProject report: Puppies! This week, the Signpost went to the kennel and interviewed WikiProject Dogs. The project has several featured and good articles, along with a large number of "Did you know" entries. We asked three project members about the challenges of creating, curating, and maintaining canine content in an increasingly dog-obsessed world.
News and notes: Wikipedia's medical collaborations gathering pace The key annual event in the Wikimedia calendar, Wikimania 2013, will be held in Hong Kong in just five weeks' time. Among the events will be a presentation by two people who are working to promote the development of medical content on Wikimedia projects. One is James Heilman of Wiki Project Med, a non-profit dedicated to making "clear, reliable, comprehensive, up-to-date educational resources and information in the biomedical and related social sciences freely available to all people in the language of their choice". The other is Lori Thicke, president of Translators Without Borders (TWB), the Connecticut-based organisation set up in 2010 to provide pro-bono translation services for humanitarian non-profits
Technology report: VisualEditor in midst of game-changing deployment series The VisualEditor extension has gone live by default to registered users on the English Wikipedia, marking a huge milestone in a project that has taken the best part of a decade to reach fruition. The extension was previously described as "the biggest and most important change to our user experience we’ve ever undertaken" by the WMF team behind it.
Traffic report: Yahoo! crushes the competition ... in Wikipedia views The real world made a strong showing in the top 10 last week, as news stories such as Yahoo!'s purchase of Tumblr, the murder of Odin Lloyd, the continuing drama over NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and the ill-health of Nelson Mandela crowded out the usual roster of TV shows, movies, websites and video games. Not that they were entirely excluded, of course.
Arbitration report: Tea Party movement reopened, new AUSC appointments Following a one-month period of moderated discussion, Tea Party movement has been reopened by the Committee. The proposed decisions are currently being voted upon. Race and politics remains suspended pending the return of User:Apostle12.
Op-ed: It's time to stop pretending the English-language Wikinews is a viable project This is Wikinews' fundamental problem: it can neither do a good job providing a summary of world news, nor does it have any special focus that it does well. It's a collection of random articles, with only the occasional, passing resemblance to important current events.
WikiProject report: Not Jimbo: WikiProject Wales This week, we traveled to Cymru with the folks at WikiProject Wales.
News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation Board appoints world expert in women's issues, global south In apparent acknowledgment of the urgency of two issues facing the Wikimedia movement—the need to engage both women and the global south—the WMF Board has appointed Ana Toni as one of its four expert members. Toni will bring rare expertise to the movement, and the Signpost understands that her skills in advocacy and her key roles in international NGOs are likely to be a natural match with the WMF as the hub of disseminating free knowledge around the world.
Dispatches: Infoboxes: time for a fresh look? The fundamental idea of an infobox is clear: keep it simple and limited to essentials. At some point, however, these basic principles seem to have been abandoned, in favour of an approach akin to "the more the merrier".
Featured content: The week of the birds Five articles, six lists, and ten pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
Hey, per this and your recent block of Murry1975, if I see you again making a careless or inappropriate block like this I will block you for 24 hours for disruption. This is your only warning. --John (talk) 15:13, 15 July 2013 (UTC)
DF, it looks like no one told you that this is at ANI now. You might want to comment there. As usual, it looks like people are beginning to turn up the heat for no readily apparent reason, but FWIW, I do think this block was a mistake, and it is painful for a good faith editor with a clean block log to have to live with a sullied block log. Without resorting to unnecessary threats, my advice is to review what happened again, and consider apologizing to Murray1975. --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:50, 15 July 2013 (UTC)
The Signpost: 17 July 2013
WikiProject report: WikiProject Square Enix This week, we explored the fantasy worlds of video game developer Square Enix by interviewing WikiProject Square Enix. The project began in September 2006 as a spin-off of WikiProject Final Fantasy, but today covers that, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger, and a variety of other game series, with exceptions explained in the interview below. The project is home to 32 pieces of Featured material and 104 Good and A-class articles.
News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation's new plans announced Last week the Wikimedia Foundation released its annual plan for July 2013 to June 2014. It provides a surprisingly frank view—of past achievements and failures, and future goals and risks—that could be afforded only by a non-profit that is confident and beholden to no commercial or political interests.
Featured content: Documents and sports Four articles, five lists, and sixteen pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
Arbitration report: Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds case opens; July 22 deadline for checkuser and oversight applications The case Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds was opened. Voting on the Tea Party movement case continued, after a failed attempt at moderated discussion. A group tasked with deciding the content of the lead section of the Jerusalem article has reported back to the committee. Applications for checkuser and oversight permissions close on 22 July.
In the media: Wikipedia flamewars The Washington Post reported Tuesday on the most controversial articles on various language Wikipedias as determined by a cross-continental research group.
WikiProject report: WikiProject Religion This week, the Signpost delved into the vast and complex areas of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views that make up religion. WikiProject Religion has been around since 2005 and has a complex scope, in that it only takes articles that deal with religion in a non-sectarian sense, along with any articles that do not have a dedicated daughter project.
News and notes: Wikivoyage turns ten, but where to now?; Wikipedia Zero expands into India Contributors to Wikivoyage, the sister project adopted by the Wikimedia Foundation last year, are celebrating their 10th anniversary this week. ... The Wikimedia Foundation has announced via press release that it has partnered with Aircel to provide free mobile access to Wikipedia.
Traffic report: Gleeless Death hangs over the top 10 this week, as tragic deaths both past and present continued to cast their pall over an already troubled world. The death of Corey Monteith led to a spike in interest in the man himself, his girlfriend and co-star Lea Michele, and the show that made them both famous, Glee.
Featured content: Engineering and the arts Twelve articles, seven lists, and eight pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
Arbitration report: Infoboxes case opens The case Infoboxes was opened. The evidence phase continues in Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds. Voting on the proposed decision continues in the Tea Party movement case.
Op-ed: The VisualEditor Beta and the path to change One of the narratives I've heard a lot is that Wikipedia is unable to change, that it's too stagnant, too poorly resourced, too inherently resistant to change. I don't believe that at all.
Traffic report: Bouncing Baby Brouhaha Somewhat predictably, the birth of a new heir to the House of Windsor on 22 July led the English-speaking world to suddenly embrace Monarchism. In honour of this occasion, the Traffic report will be assiduously employing British spelling and dating conventions. Cheers.
WikiProject report: Babel Series: Politics on the Turkish Wikipedia This week, we visited the Turkish Wikipedia for an interview with VikiProje Siyaset (WikiProject Politics). The project began in April 2010 and has sustained a small but enthusiastic group of editors focusing on both the domestic politics of Turkey and international politics. The basics for article quality and importance ratings have been determined, but tracking this data has not yet become widespread on the Turkish Wikipedia. The project maintains a portal, a variety of resources, and a rotating selection of images to spruce up the project's page.
News and notes: Gearing up for Wikimania 2013 The ninth annual Wikimania conference will open in just over a week at the Jockey Club Auditorium, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Wikimania is for people worldwide who have an interest in Wikimedia Foundation projects. It features presentations and discussions on those projects, on free knowledge and content, and on related social and technical issues.
Arbitration report: Race and politics case closes The case Race and politics was closed, while three other cases remain open.
Featured content: Caterpillars, warblers, and frogs—oh my! Eight articles, five lists, seven pictures, and one topic were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
Arbitration report: Fourteen editors proposed for ban in Tea Party movement case Fourteen editors have been proposed for a six-month page ban in the Tea Party movement case. In the Infoboxes and Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds cases, the workshop and evidence phases have closed, and proposed decisions are scheduled to be posted.
Traffic report: Greetings from the graveyard It's crickets and tumbleweeds this week, as the top 10 sees its lowest view-count since the project began. If Wikipedia were selling anything, we'd be having a fire sale by now.
News and notes: Chapters Association self-destructs The opening days of the annual Wikimania, referred to as the "pre-conference", are not typically newsworthy. This changed dramatically when the Chapters Association council met on Thursday.
WikiProject report: WikiProject Freedom of Speech This week, we journey into a WikiProject that focuses about what keeps Wikipedia running, the freedom of speech.
News and notes: "Beautifully smooth" Wikimania with few hitches About a thousand Wikimedians journeyed to Hong Kong this week for the annual Wikimania conference, the annual gathering of the Wikimedia movement. Wikimania, which has been held since 2005, serves as the principal physical meetup for Wikimedians around the world.
In the media: Chinese censorship One major story that came out of Wikimania was Jimmy Wales' statements at the conference that he would prefer to have Wikipedia banned entirely in mainland China than censored as it is currently.
Featured content: Wikipedia takes the cities The week's newest featured content includes seven articles, four lists, and twelve pictures.
Special report: Jimmy Wales: media favors entertainment over raising public awareness Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia and its public face to most of the media, has declared that media organizations are missing out on the "opportunity of the century" by not conducting true investigative reporting into American surveillance practices, a debate kindled by information leaked by Edward Snowden.
Arbitration report: Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds case closes The Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds case has closed, with a unanimous decision to desysop a Wikimedia Foundation employee and indefinitely ban another editor. The Tea Party movement case has stalled yet again, in the wake of a controversial proposal to ban 14 editors. A proposed decision in the Infoboxes case was scheduled to be posted on 14 August.
In the media: Chelsea Manning, Box-office predictors, and 'Storming Wikipedia' Wikipedia's gender identity MOS section and its effect on Chelsea Manning was both praised and emulated in the media this week. ... Coverage of the distributed open collaborative course called "Storming Wikipedia" continued this week.
Recent research: WikiSym 2013 retrospective 98 registered participants attended the annual WikiSym+OpenSym conference from August 5-7 at Hong Kong's Cyberport facility.
WikiProject report: Loop-the-loop: Amusement Parks This week, we secured free admission for WikiProject Amusement Parks, the project dedicated to amusement rides, roller coasters, theme parks, traveling carnivals, and funfairs.
Traffic report: Reddit creep The debt that Wikipedia owes sites like Reddit or Google often goes unacknowledged around here. If the purpose of Wikipedia is to bring knowledge to the world, then it is sites like these that are actually doing it.
Featured content: WikiCup update, and the gardens of Finland The 2013 WikiCup competition is entering its final round. Eleven articles and nine pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
News and notes: Looking ahead to Wiki Loves Monuments Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM), Wikimedia's annual volunteer-driven and the world largest photo contest, is gearing up to be conducted throughout September 2013. The event, originally developed in the Netherlands in 2010, has gone global with 34 countries taking part last and 49 this year.
Technology report: Gallery improvements launch on Wikipedia Wikipedia's traditional image gallery format, produced by the markup, has remained largely unchanged for years. The resulting layout, seen below, does not adapt well to variations in image size, and has been characterized by some critics as aesthetically unappealing.
In the media: Chelsea Manning, Box-office predictors, and 'Storming Wikipedia' Wikipedia's gender identity MOS section and its effect on Chelsea Manning was both praised and emulated in the media this week. ... Coverage of the distributed open collaborative course called "Storming Wikipedia" continued this week.
Recent research: WikiSym 2013 retrospective 98 registered participants attended the annual WikiSym+OpenSym conference from August 5-7 at Hong Kong's Cyberport facility.
WikiProject report: Loop-the-loop: Amusement Parks This week, we secured free admission for WikiProject Amusement Parks, the project dedicated to amusement rides, roller coasters, theme parks, traveling carnivals, and funfairs.
Traffic report: Reddit creep The debt that Wikipedia owes sites like Reddit or Google often goes unacknowledged around here. If the purpose of Wikipedia is to bring knowledge to the world, then it is sites like these that are actually doing it.
Featured content: WikiCup update, and the gardens of Finland The 2013 WikiCup competition is entering its final round. Eleven articles and nine pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
News and notes: Looking ahead to Wiki Loves Monuments Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM), Wikimedia's annual volunteer-driven and the world largest photo contest, is gearing up to be conducted throughout September 2013. The event, originally developed in the Netherlands in 2010, has gone global with 34 countries taking part last and 49 this year.
Technology report: Gallery improvements launch on Wikipedia Wikipedia's traditional image gallery format, produced by the markup, has remained largely unchanged for years. The resulting layout, seen below, does not adapt well to variations in image size, and has been characterized by some critics as aesthetically unappealing.
In the media: Manning "put back in the closet"; State involvement in Azerbaijani Wikipedia After media praise for Wikipedia's decision to move the Bradley Manning article to Chelsea Manning, the reversion of that page move on August 31, after a discussion in which several hundred Wikipedians participated, has so far triggered less favourable feedback, as well as a blog post from Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner expressing her disappointment with the decision.
News and notes: Privacy policy debate gears up On September 3, the Wikimedia Foundation launched the second stage of the process to improve the privacy policy implemented on most Wikimedia sites, including Wikipedia and its sister projects, by publishing a policy draft.
Discussion report: Arbcom election procedures, Wiki Loves Monuments, Privacy policy, FDC, and more As mentioned in "In the news" on Wikipedia's main page, the Library of Birmingham in the United Kingdom has opened. This interior photo was taken a week before opening. The article reports that the library "has been described as the largest public library in the United Kingdom, the largest public cultural space in Europe, and the largest regional library in Europe."
Featured content: Bridging the way to a Peasants' Revolt Four articles, four lists, and eight pictures were promoted to 'featured' status this week on the English Wikipedia
WikiProject report: Writing on the frontier: Psychology on Wikipedia This week, we spent some time with the minds behind WikiProject Psychology. The project was created in March 2006 and has grown to include 14 Featured Articles and 43 Good Articles.
Technology report: Making Wikipedia more accessible In this week's "Technology report", we explore ways of making Wikipedia more accessible to users of screen readers. Graham87 is a highly active contributor who is also blind and accesses the site through a screen reader.
Featured content: Tintin goes featured Four articles, eight lists, and eight pictures were promoted to "featured" status this week on the English Wikipedia.
News and notes: As deadline approaches, Individual Engagement Grants looks for ideas The deadline for proposals to the Individual Engagement Grants (IEG) volunteer committee on Meta will pass on 30 September. The program is designed to fund projects that tackle long-term problem and have a significant editing community impact; it has previously supported solutions like The Wikipedia Library, which improves Wikipedian access to online reference sources like JSTOR (see Signpost coverage).
Traffic report: Syria, celebrities, and association football: oh my! While the Syrian Civil War crept its slow way into the minds of the public, with a new fourth related entry in the top 25, the top 10 remained dominated by celebrity, mainly sports and music. Two megabucks transfers stimulated public interest in football/soccer ahead of the 2014 FIFA World Cup qualifiers, while Lil Wayne's public apology ahead of his latest album release sent him to the top.
Arbitration report: Workshop phase opens in Manning naming dispute; Infoboxes case closes Discussion over the Manning title dispute was off to a running start as evidence and workshop phases continued in the Bradley/Chelsea Manning naming dispute. The Infoboxes case closed with topic bans for two users, and a recommendation for community discussion of infoboxes.
Hi there! You are cordially invited to an edit-a-thon this Saturday (21 September) in Sydney at the State Library of New South Wales (SLNSW), where you can collaborate with other Wikipedians throughout the day. Andy Carr, a senior librarian at SLNSW will also be helping out. The theme of the edit-a-thon is paralympics sports, but you are free to come along to meet other wiki contributors, and edit other topics.
If you are unable to attend in person, we will also be collaborating online. Details and an attendee list are at Wikipedia:Meetup/Sydney/September 2013. Hope you can make it! John Vandenberg 09:09, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
News and notes: Third time's the charm: the FDC's newest round of funding requests The Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC), the volunteer-led body that evaluates chapter and (for the first time) thematic organizational annual plan grant requests to the Wikimedia Foundation, is preparing for its third round of public proceedings to deliberate on the distribution of several million US dollars of Wikimedia movement funds.
WikiProject report: 18,464 Good Articles on the wall This week, the Signpost headed to WikiProject Good Articles. As of publishing time, out of the 4,331,477 articles on Wikipedia, only 18,464 are rated as "good" (about 1 in 235).
Featured content: Hurricane Diane and Van Gogh Thirteen articles, six lists, and five pictures were promoted to "featured" status last week on the English Wikipedia.
Technology report: What can Wikidata do for Wikipedia? In this week's "Technology report", we look at how the growth of Wikidata can benefit Wikipedia. Gerard Meijssen is a highly active contributor and frequent blogger about Wikidata. We asked him to share his thoughts on how the new project benefits Wikipedia.
Traffic report: Twerking, tragedy and TV The top 10 is bookended by unlucky dates, as Friday the 13th fell just after the anniversary of 9/11. Breaking Bad's final season continued to draw attention, while interest in Miley Cyrus's youthful exuberance is fading only slowly.
Op-ed: Q&A on Public Relations and Wikipedia Over the last year, there's been extensive debate about whether public relations professionals and other corporate representatives should participate on Wikipedia and, if so, to what extent and what kinds of rules should be followed.
Traffic report: Look on Walter's works The saga of Walter White, chemistry teacher-turned-drug kingpin, as told in the critically adored television series Breaking Bad, has been a water-cooler necessity for years, and now, as it nears its end, audiences are feverishly following every plot thread to guess what the finale will reveal.
News and notes: Last call for Wiki Loves Monuments; Community–WMF tension over VisualEditor On 30 September, Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM), the Wikimedia community's global photo competition, will reach to the end of its submission period. The proceedings have been underway since the first of this month; national juries will start reviewing submissions for the first round of selections after it closes ... Community aggravation with one of the Wikimedia Foundation's signature initiatives, the VisualEditor, came to the fore again this week with the announcement and implementation of code blocking the tool.
WikiProject report: Babel Series: GOOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLLLL!!!!! This week, we continued our exploration of other language editions of Wikipedia by visiting the Spanish Wikipedia's Wikiproyecto Fútbol (WikiProject Football).
Featured content: Wikipedia takes the stage Twelve articles, six lists, and five pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
Recent research: Automatic detection of "infiltrating" Wikipedia admins; Wiki, or 'pedia? A conference paper makes a rather serious claim: "We find a surprisingly large number of editors who change their behavior and begin focusing more on a particular controversial topic once they are promoted to administrator status."
Op-ed: Commons medical diagnostic images under threat from unresolved ownership Medical images have transformed many aspects of modern medicine. Over the past two decades the increasing sophistication of MRI, CT-scanning, and X-ray techniques has made these technologies the cornerstone of diagnosing a range of conditions, replacing what used to be largely guesswork by doctors. They can be the difference between life and death for a patient, and their importance is underlined by the tens of billions of dollars spent on them annually just in North America. For Wikimedia Foundation projects, advanced images are now a powerful tool for describing and explaining, and educating our worldwide readership of medical articles.
News and notes: WMF signals new grantmaking priorities In what will be remembered as a game-changing week for Wikimedia grantmaking, the Foundation's executive director, Sue Gardner, published a forthright and in places highly critical statement, Reflections on the FDC process, and grantmaking staff revealed that the WMF will significantly strengthen its targeting of optimal impact in funding.
Featured content: Bobby, Ben, Roger and a fantasia Six articles and two pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.
Arbitration report: Infoboxes: After the war Editor's note: To go beyond the mere facts of cases, the "Arbitration report" invited several editors who participated in the recent Infoboxes case to comment on infoboxes: what they are, where new users can go to find out about them, specifications and protocols, best practices, and how the upcoming community discussion recommended by the Committee in the case decision should be framed.
WikiProject report: U2 Too This week, we revisited the enthusiastic editors at WikiProject U2. Started in June 2007, the project has grown in spurts, resulting in a collection of 8 Featured Articles and 24 Good Articles. The project maintains a to do list, portal, and a list of references.
Traffic report: Shutdown shenanigans If you're living in the United States, what did you do during the government shutdown? Well, it seems most people watched the final episode of Breaking Bad.
WikiProject report: Australian Roads This week, we moved to the esoteric world of Australian roads.
Featured content: Under the sea Seven articles, six lists, and twelve pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.
News and notes: Extensive network of clandestine paid advocacy exposed An investigation by the English Wikipedia community into suspicious edits and sockpuppet activity has led to astonishing revelations that Wiki-PR, a multi-million-dollar US-based company, has created, edited, or maintained several thousand Wikipedia articles for paying clients using a sophisticated array of concealed user accounts.
In the media: College credit for editing Wikipedia The University of California, San Francisco attracted substantial media attention over its new course offering that will give credit to fourth year medical students for editing Wikipedia articles about medicine.
News and notes: Vice on Wiki-PR's paid advocacy; Featured list elections begin Media coverage on Wiki-PR, the multi-million-dollar US-based company that has broken several policies and guidelines on the English Wikipedia in its quest to create and maintain thousands of articles for paying clients, continued this week with a feature story by Martin Robbins in the British edition of Vice magazine.
Traffic report: Peaceful potpourri A slow week, with low overall views and the Top 10 dominated by longstanding pages. Gravity, Alfonso Cuaron's outer space-set action art film, not only held its position at the top of the US box office but climbed to the top of the Wikipedia chart as well, showing that it has become a major talking point.
WikiProject report: Heraldry and Vexillology This week, we studied coats of arms and flags with the folks at WikiProject Heraldry and Vexillology. Started in September 2006, the project has grown to include 20 Featured Articles and nearly 50 Good Articles. The project maintains a portal, a list of resources, and a variety of images and templates.
Featured content: That's a lot of pictures Six articles, two lists, and thirty-three pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia last week.
Arbitration report: Manning naming dispute case closes The Manning naming dispute case has closed, with a strong and unanimous statement by the Committee against disparaging references to transgendered persons. Sanctions were enacted against six editors.
News and notes: Grantmaking season—rumblings in the German-language community The next twice-yearly round of Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) grantmaking is soon to close for community questioning and commentary. Ten nation-based Wikimedia chapters and one thematic organisation are asking for a total of more than US$5M of donors’ money from the Foundation’s renamed annual plan grant process. Aside from Wikimedia UK ($708k), the three biggest asks are from the German-speaking chapters: Wikimedia Germany is asking for $2.4M and Wikimedia Austria $311k; and the German-language-related Swiss chapter is applying for $500k.
Traffic report: Your average week ... and a fish Media, sports and Google Doodles dominate, though a very odd fish decided to crash the party.
WikiProject report: Elements of the world This week, we headed to an elementary subject with WikiProject Elements. Founded by Mav in 2002, this project has grown to have 19 featured articles, 2 featured topics, and 68 good articles. The project also has a list of templates, and a periodic table of elements filled with pictures.
Traffic report: 200 miles in 200 years The top 10 encapsulates the history of human aviation; at #1, a Google Doodle celebrating the 216th anniversary of the first parachute jump; at #10, the enduringly popular scifi film Gravity, a paean to human spaceflight. It's odd to think it's taken us 200 years to travel about that many miles up.
In the media: Rand Paul plagiarizes Wikipedia? While giving a speech on behalf of a gubernatorial candidate, Paul advocated his pro-life position, and compared allowing unrestricted abortions to the film Gattaca. He went on to use strikingly similar language and phraseology in his speech to what the Wikipedia page reads. The Washington Post's article conceded that Wikipedia is a widely used source for trivial information, but mocked the fact that a politician would view it as a reliable source.
News and notes: Sex and drug tourism—Wikivoyage's soft underbelly? In January we raised several potentially troublesome issues for the Wikimedia movement in taking on Wikivoyage, including the apparent inadequacy of the English Wikivoyage sex-tourism policy, hurriedly strengthened against mention of child sex after our inquiries. However, both sex-tourism and illegal-activities policies remain equivocal about how the site should treat entries about sex tourism more generally, and drugs that are classed as illicit in almost every country. Yet the Signpost has found it remarkably easy to locate material in Wikivoyage that violates both the spirit and the letter of the policies.
Featured content: Wrestling with featured content This year's WikiCup competition has finished, while three articles, five lists, and six pictures, were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.
Recent research: User influence on site policies: Wikipedia vs. Facebook vs. Youtube Laura Stein, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, has concluded that, based on her comparison of user policy documents (including the Terms of Service) of YouTube, Facebook and Wikipedia, Wikipedia offers the highest level of participation power overall.
WikiProject report: Special: Lessons from the dead and dying With Halloween, the Day of the Dead, and other gloomy celebrations this week, we're taking a look at Wikipedia's dead and dying. For some dead WikiProjects, the sole purpose of their life was simply to serve as a warning to others. Some of these projects may still be salvageable, but for most, a revival is unlikely. Here are some projects that never got off the ground and the lessons that can be gleaned from their follies
There is a backstage pass coming up to be followed by an editathon in the State Library of New South Wales on 23 November. This is the first time that an Australian cultural institution has opened its doors to us in this way and will be a special opportunity because the Library is providing: one of its best rooms; its expert curators (along with their expertise and their white gloves); a newly launched website (containing new resources); and of course, items from its collection (including rare and usually unavailable material) which we can look at, learn from, and use, to improve WP articles. For example, on the chosen topic (Australia and WWI), the Library holds many diaries and manuscripts from the period.
As you can see from the Library's project page, they have connected this editathon with their own work. They have already set out a wide range of resources to make things easier for us. Please sign up on the editathon project page if you can participate either online or in person with other Wikipedians. Hope to see you there! Lankiveil(speak to me) 07:17, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
News and notes: Alleged "outing" of editor's personal information leads to Wikipedia ban As part of the second major "outing" controversy to hit the English Wikipedia in less than a year, the Chelsea/Bradley Manning naming dispute was dragged into the spotlight yet again when the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee ruled by motion to remove the administrator tools from and ban long-time Wikipedia contributor Phil Sandifer.
Traffic report: Danse Macabre It's fair to say that commemorating death was a strong theme this week, with Lou Reed's passing generating interest, as well as a Google Doodle celebrating the costume designer Edith Head. And of course, the world's greatest celebrations of the dead, Halloween and the Day of the Dead, were also popular this week.
Featured content: Five years of work leads to 63-article featured topic HMS Hood, one of the most famous warships of the Second World War, was a battlecruiser and therefore part of what is now the largest featured topic on Wikipedia: "Battlecruisers of the world". The topic was promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week alongside eleven articles, three lists, four pictures, and two other topics.
WikiProject report: WikiProject Accessibility This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Accessibility, a project that strives to make Wikipedia accessible for users with disabilities. The project improves Wikipedia's guidelines and Manual of Style, collects useful templates and scripts, and provides support to impaired Wikipedians.
Arbitration report: Ebionites 3 case closed The Ebionites 3 case has closed with an interaction ban for the two editors involved in the dispute.
Traffic report: Google Doodlebugs bust the block The numbers this week are beyond anything that has been seen since this report began. The top view count beats the average by an order of magnitude. Usually the appearance of numbers this big on the list is due to spamming, but in this case it seems they are due to honest interest; more specifically, Google Doodles, which for the first time claimed all five top slots. This column has raised numerous times the power of a Google Doodle to shine light on Wikipedia, but the wattage has never been as high as this.
Special report: FDC staff raise the benchmarks for activities, impact, planning, and governance The supporting staff of the Wikimedia Foundation’s powerful volunteer Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) have released their assessments for the third half-yearly round of funding applications. The applications for the newly named annual plan grants were submitted by affiliated entities on 1 October, and comprise a total of more than US$5M in bids.
News and notes: Trademark at issue again with the Italian Wikipedia and wikipedia.it The Italian-language Wikipedia community has overwhelmingly voted to request the Wikimedia Foundation's assistance in recovering wikipedia.it, a website that has been frequently confused with the Italian Wikipedia.
WikiProject report: The world of soap operas This week, we followed the intricate storylines of WikiProject Soap Operas.
From the editor: The Signpost needs your help As I said in August, contributing to the Signpost can be one of the most rewarding things an editor can do. The genre is refreshingly different from that of Wikipedia articles, and can allow writers to use a different range of skills. The need for an independent, volunteer-run Signpost continues to grow, given the increasing complexity and financial expenditures of the global Wikimedia movement, not to mention the English Wikipedia.
Book review: Peter Burke's Social History of Knowledge—ambitious, fascinating, and exhaustive Peter Burke's A Social History of Knowledge: Volume II: From the Encyclopédie to Wikipedia is a broad and wide-ranging look at how knowledge has been created, acquired, organized, disseminated, and sometimes lost in the Western world over the last two and a half centuries, a sequel to his 2000 book covering the prior three centuries, A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot.
Featured content: Rockin' the featured pictures Four articles, five lists, and thirty-four pictures were promoted to 'featured status' this week, including an image of a small fraction of the 18,000 taxis that serve Hong Kong.
WikiProject report: Score! American football on Wikipedia This week, we headed over to WikiProject National Football League. With 10 Featured Articles, 61 Featured Lists, and 142 Good Articles (as of publication), this WikiProject has done a lot of work improving American football articles.
News and notes: Foundation to Wiki-PR: cease and desist; Arbitration Committee elections starting The Wikimedia Foundation has sent a formal cease and desist letter to Wiki-PR—the public relations agency accused of breaking Wikipedia policies and guidelines by creating, editing, and maintaining several thousand articles for paying clients through a sophisticated array of accounts. The Foundation's attorneys, Cooley LLP, have demanded that Wiki-PR's employees abide by the site's Terms of Use and the language of a community ban from the English Wikipedia.
Traffic report: Ill Winds It's not hard to guess which event is leading interest in the top 25 this week. The sheer scale of Typhoon Haiyan is staggering; estimates place its maximum windspeed upon first landfall in the Philippines on November 6 at 315 km/h, which would make it the most powerful tropical cyclone ever to reach land. To date, the storm has killed nearly 4000 people and damaged or destroyed nearly 4 million homes.
Arbitration report: WMF opens the door for non-admin arbitrators Back in March, when the March 25 Arbitration Report covered the Audit Subcommittee appointment discussion, a statement from the WMF legal division clarified its position that access to deleted revisions required an RFA or RFA-identical process; therefore AUSC committee appointments were not open to non-admins. The WMF legal team has now further clarified its position, saying that running for and winning an election for arbitrator would qualify as the type of rigorous community selection process required for the checkuser and oversight rights held by arbitrators.
Traffic report: Kennedy shot Who Summary:Doctor Who nearly got cancelled in its first week because its premiere was swamped by coverage of the JFK assassination, which happened the same day. Thankfully, producers saw fit to rerun it the next day, which is now its official anniversary date.
News and notes: One decade of Wikisource; FDC recommendations raise serious questions The sister project Wikisource, the digital library that hosts free-content primary sources, is now a decade old. Wikisource, which now has versions in 63 languages, is the sixth type of project to reach ten-year milestone and will be the last until 2016. The Wikimedia Foundation's volunteer Funds Dissemination Committee has published its recommendations to the Board of Trustees on 11 new applications for annual grants by 11 WMF-affiliated organisations. The maximum total budget for the current and upcoming March rounds is US$6M.
WikiProject report: Electronic Apple Pie This week, we returned to WikiProject Apple Inc. for a peek at their newest articles about the latest in gadgets and software. The last time we took a bite out of WikiProject Apple, they had just finished merging WikiProject Macintosh and WikiProject iPhone OS. Today, the project is hard at work rewriting their primary article, improving the subject's outline, and adding to the project's list of 25 Good Articles and 6 Featured Articles.
Featured content: F*&! Seventeen articles, four lists, and twenty-eight pictures were promoted to "featured" status in the last two weeks.
Traffic report: Deaths of Mandela, Walker top the list When one edits this page for too long, one is tempted to appoint oneself as the psychoanalyst for the human race, or at least the English-speaking portion thereof. Since nearly everyone uses Wikipedia, the constant stream of TV updates, pointless celebrity scandals, and inquiries after who has died can seem like a dreary peek into humanity's surprisingly banal collective consciousness.
In the media: Edward Snowden a "hero"; German Wikipedia court ruling Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales caught headlines last week when he referred to former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden ... Loek Essers of the International Data Group, (IDG) News Service is reporting that a German court has held Wikipedia liable for its content, but still does not have to fact check the information in advance.
News and notes: Wiki Loves Monuments—winners announced Amid great anticipation the international prize winners have just been announced for the fourth annual Wiki Loves Monuments, now the world's largest photographic competition and one of the biggest events on the Wikimedia movement's calendar. ... The first prize has gone to David Gubler's photograph of a Swiss train crossing a viaduct.
WikiProject report: WikiProject Wine This week, the Signpost interviewed the Wine WikiProject.
Interview: Wikipedia's first Featured Article centurion On 7 December, Wikipedia editor Wehwalt reached the momentous milestone of 100 featured articles with History of Chincoteague, Virginia. Quite apart from the reading and research, that's around three-quarters of a million words of finalised text, not counting footnotes, image captions and the rest.
Featured content: Viewer discretion advised Three articles, one list, and eight pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.
Technology report: MediaWiki 1.22 released On 6 December, the latest version of the MediaWiki software was released. In development from March 2013 through October 2013, the release featured anti-spam and counter-vandalism improvements.
Traffic report: Hopper to the top An animated Google Doodle for computer programmer and naval rear admiral Grace Hopper generated another record-breaking hit count for the year, though the count for the list overall was lower than for that of the previous holder.
News and notes: Nine new arbitrators announced A little more than six days after the close of voting, the results of the annual Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) elections have been announced. Of the 22 candidates, 13 managed to gain more supports than opposes, though only one gained the support of more than half of the voters. Eight were elected to two-year terms, and a ninth will serve for one year.
Technology report: Introducing the GLAMWikiToolset This week, the GLAMWikiToolset, or GWToolset, is being deployed to the Wikimedia Commons. It allows for GLAM organizations to batch upload content based on various metadata stored in an XML schema. In the past this has been done by various bots, but now it will be easier for GLAMs to do it directly.
Recent research: Cross-language editors, election predictions, vandalism experiments Analyzing edits to the-then 46 largest Wikipedias between July 9 and August 8, 2013, a study identified a set of about 8,000 contributors with a global user account who have edited more than one of these language versions in that time frame.
Featured content: Drunken birds and treasonous kings Five articles, two lists, and five pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia.
WikiProject report: More Great WikiProject Logos We saved one last special report for 2013. After our well-received review of great WikiProject logos a couple years ago, it was only a matter of time before we collected a new batch of interesting iconography that showcases the creativity of the Wikipedia community. Hopefully, these logos will also inspire other projects to liven up their drab pages.
News and notes: IEG round 2 funding rewards diverse ambitions A significant move by the Wikimedia Foundation has been to broaden the types of activities it funds to develop several different programs for judging and allocating that funding, and to set up volunteer committees that initially assess applications for funding.
Technology report: OAuth: future of user designed tools Last month, the OAuth extension was deployed to all Wikimedia wikis. OAuth is a standard used for allowing users to authenticate third-party applications, also known as consumers, to take actions on their behalf.
Winston Churchill, an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for an individual good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Dana boomer (talk) 01:09, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
The Signpost: 01 January 2014
Traffic report: A year stuck in traffic In fact, the majority are relatively evenly split between three themes: people of interest, television, and websites.
Arbitration report: Examining the Committee's year In 2013, the arbitration committee closed 10 cases, 9 amendment requests, and 26 clarification requests.
In the media: Does Wikipedia need a medical disclaimer? On New Year's Day, an article by Tim Sampson published in The Daily Dot and republished shortly after on Mashable covered the currently ongoing medical disclaimer RfC.
Book review: Common Knowledge: An Ethnography of Wikipedia Dariusz Jemielniak's book is the newest about Wikipedia, published in Poland in 2013 and with an English edition forthcoming in 2014.
News and notes: The year in review This was the year in which one journalist described the flagship site, Wikipedia, as "wickedly seductive". It was the year Wikipedia's replacement value was estimated at $6.6bn, its market value at "tens of billions of dollars", and its consumer benefit "hundreds of billions of dollars". But it was also the year in which one commentator forecast the decline of Wikipedia—that the project is in trouble from its shrinking volunteer workforce, skewed coverage, "crushing bureaucracy" and 90 percent male community.
WikiProject report: Where Are They Now? Fifth Edition The year 2013 has come and gone, adding 50 new WikiProject Reports to our long list of projects we've had the privilege to meet. Last year saw the continuation of our Babel series, featuring WikiProjects from other languages of Wikipedia. We also expanded our selection of special reports, offering readers a growing collection of helpful tips and tools as they participate in WikiProjects.
Featured content: 2013—the trends Over the past year 1181 pieces of featured content were promoted. The most active of the featured content programs was featured picture candidates (FPC), which promoted an average of 46 pictures a month. This was followed by featured article candidates (FAC; 32.5 a month). Coming in third was featured list candidates (FLC; 18 a month).
Technology report: Looking back on 2013 2013 saw a lot of changes to MediaWiki software and Wikimedia infrastructure.
Public Domain Day: Why the year 2019 is so significant Public Domain Day—January 1, 2014—gives me an opportunity to reflect on this important asset, mandated by the Constitution of the United States.
Traffic report: Tragedy and television The various maladies that befall humanity got some well-known faces this week: the death of the well-liked actor James Avery topped the list, but Michael Schumacher, who is in a coma after a skiing accident, also drew attention.
Technology report: Gearing up for the Architecture Summit MediaWiki developers will be meeting in San Francisco on January 23–24 for an Architecture Summit.
News and notes: WMF employee forced out over "paid advocacy editing" On 8 January, the Wikimedia Foundation notified the Wikimedia-l mailing list that Sarah Stierch, a popular Wikimedian and the Foundation's Program Evaluation Community Coordinator, was no longer an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, as a result of being paid to create articles on the English Wikipedia.
Op-ed: WikiCup competition beginning a new year At the very start of the new year, 2014's WikiCup—an annual competition which has been held on Wikipedia in various forms since 2007—began.
Featured content: A portal to the wonderful world of technology Twelve articles, three lists, seven pictures, and a portal were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia in the last two weeks.
Technology report: Architecture Summit schedule published The proposed schedule for the MediaWiki Archicture Summit has been published. The two main plenary sessions will be about HTML templating, and Service-oriented architecture.
Op-ed: Licensed for reuse? Citing open-access sources in Wikipedia articles It is heavily ironic that two decades after the World Wide Web was started — largely to make it easier to share scholarly research — most of our past and present research publications are still hidden behind paywalls for private profit. The bitter twist is that the vast majority of this research is publicly funded, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide each year.
Traffic report: The Hours are Ours We now can get a far more accurate picture of which short surges in popularity are likely natural and which are not.
WikiProject report: WikiProject Sociology This week, we studied human social behavior with the folks at WikiProject Sociology.
News and notes: Modification of WMF protection brought to Arbcom The Wikimedia Foundation's Director of Community Advocacy's application of pending changes level two on the article Conventional PCI—an action taken under its rarely used office actions policy—has escalated to the Arbitration Committee after an editor upgraded it to full protection.
Featured content: Dr. Watson, I presume Fifteen articles, nine lists, twenty pictures, and one topic were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia over the last two weeks.
Special report: The few who write Wikipedia On 15 January, Wikipedia turned thirteen years old. In that time, this site has grown from a small site that was known to only a select few to one of the most popular websites on the internet. At the same time, recent data suggests that there is a power curve among users, where the comparative few who are writing most of Wikipedia have most of the edits. The result of this is that there is going to be bias in what is created, and how we deal with it as Wikipedians is indicative of the future of the site. Furthermore, this brings up what we have to do in order to combat this bias, as there are many ideas, but the question is whether they will work or not.
Technology report: Architecting the future of MediaWiki This week we're interviewing Brion Vibber about the then-upcoming Architecture Summit. Brion is a long time Wikipedian, the first employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, and currently the lead software architect working with the mobile team.
In the media: Wikipedia for robots; Wikipedia—a temperamental teenager An article in USA Today announced that a European-funded project called RoboEarth that is designed to give robots a mechanism by which to access information to dispense.
Traffic report: No show for the Globes While the 71st Golden Globe Awards, held on 12 January, had an impact on the top 25, their presence was largely absent from the Top 10. With the exception of Best Actor winner Leonardo DiCaprio, the only Golden Globe entrants in the Top 10 are films that would have been there anyway.
Traffic report: Six strikes out There are times when this job is hard. As an analogy, imagine navigating in fog at night, except you don't know where you are, you don't know where you want to go, and your flashlight keeps dying on you.
WikiProject report: Special report: Contesting contests Contests have existed almost as long as the English Wikipedia. Contestants have expanded hundreds of articles and made tens of thousands of edits. Although it may seem as though there aren't any negatives to contests, they have occasionally become a divisive topic on the English Wikipedia.
News and notes: Wiki-PR defends itself, condemns Wikipedia's actions Wiki-PR, a public relations agency, whose employees used a sophisticated array of concealed user accounts to create, edit, and maintain several thousand Wikipedia articles for paying clients, has told Business Insider that it was demonized by the online encyclopedia. Jordan French, Wiki-PR's CEO, said he believes the Wikimedia Foundation "painted" his company to look like an "evil entity" that is "scrubbing truths from Wikipedia".
Traffic report: Six strikes out There are times when this job is hard. As an analogy, imagine navigating in fog at night, except you don't know where you are, you don't know where you want to go, and your flashlight keeps dying on you.
WikiProject report: Special report: Contesting contests Contests have existed almost as long as the English Wikipedia. Contestants have expanded hundreds of articles and made tens of thousands of edits. Although it may seem as though there aren't any negatives to contests, they have occasionally become a divisive topic on the English Wikipedia.
News and notes: Wiki-PR defends itself, condemns Wikipedia's actions Wiki-PR, a public relations agency, whose employees used a sophisticated array of concealed user accounts to create, edit, and maintain several thousand Wikipedia articles for paying clients, has told Business Insider that it was demonized by the online encyclopedia. Jordan French, Wiki-PR's CEO, said he believes the Wikimedia Foundation "painted" his company to look like an "evil entity" that is "scrubbing truths from Wikipedia".
In the media: WikiVIP; Art Feminism; Medical articles; PR manipulation; Azerbaijani Wikipedia As reported in various media outlets this week, including The Next Web and The Daily Dot, this past week, Wikimedia Commons and various language Wikipedias are working together to encourage subjects of Wikipedia articles to record a 10-second clip of their voice to be appended to their Wikipedia article.
Technology report: Left with no choice Software evolution does not always mean that features are being added. It also means that old fat is being trimmed. It is no different for MediaWiki.
News and notes: WMF bites the bullet on affiliation and FDC funding, elevates Wikimedia user groups In a bold move, the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees has announced a major change in policy concerning affiliated groups in the worldwide movement, and FDC funding levels to eligible chapters and thematic organizations over the next two years. Both decisions were published last Tuesday after considerable post-meeting consultation with the FDC and the Affiliations Committee (AffCom). The core of the first decision is
Featured content: Space selfie Thirteen articles, three lists, and twenty-five images were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia from 19 January to 1 February.
Traffic report: Sports Day Two great sporting events, the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics, collide in one week, transforming the top ten into a festival of flying feet, a carnival of colliding caraniums and a bacchanal of bouncing balls, combined to influence Wikipedia's most popular articles last week.
WikiProject report: Game Time in Russia In celebration of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, we revisited the team at WikiProject Russia to learn how the project has changed since our first interview in 2011.
News and notes: Foundation takes aim at undisclosed paid editing; Greek Wikipedia editor faces down legal challenge The Wikimedia Foundation has proposed to modify the Wikimedia projects' Terms of use to specifically ban undisclosed paid editing. ... Dimitris Liourdis, a lawyer in training who moonlights as an administrator on the Greek Wikipedia, is embroiled in a legal dispute with a Greek politician over alleged edits made to his Wikipedia article.
Technology report: ULS Comeback Runa Bhattacharjee has notified the community that the Foundation is ready to turn the Universal Language Selector back on.
WikiProject report: Countering Systemic Bias WikiProject Countering System Bias aims to combat imbalanced coverage while encouraging neglected cultural perspectives and points of view, both in articles and in the larger Wikipedia community. As you'll see from the varied experiences and motivations of our nine respondents, the biases that the folks at WP CSB tackle run the full gamut of human characteristics and dispositions. The interview that follows unveils many of Wikipedia's greatest shortcomings.
Featured content: Holotype Five articles, seven lists, forty-three pictures, and two portals were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia in the last two weeks.
Traffic report: Chilly Valentines Valentines Day got a somewhat muted reception this week, overshadowed by continuing coverage of the Winter Olympics in Sochi and the death of Shirley Temple.
Forum: Should Wikimedia modify its terms of use to require disclosure? About a week ago, the Wikimedia Foundation proposed to modify the Wikimedia projects' terms of use to specifically ban paid editing, by adding a new clause titled "Paid contributions without disclosure". We have asked two users, one in favor of the measure (Smallbones) and one opposed (Pete Forsyth), to contribute their opinions on the matter.
Featured content: Odin salutes you Eight articles, three lists, and nine pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.
WikiProject report: Racking brains with neuroscience This week, we found three Ph.D.s willing to give us a crash course on WikiProject Neuroscience.
Special report: Diary of a protester: Wikimedian perishes in Ukrainian unrest Ukraine has been gripped by widespread protests over the past three months. Due to a decision by former president Viktor Yanukovych—at Russia's urging—to abandon integration with the European Union, the country was (and in many ways still is) split between the Europe-favoring Ukrainian-speaking western half and the Russian-speaking east and south. Hundreds have died during the unrest, leaving thousands of family members and friends to bury their loved ones. This week our Wikimedian colleagues in Ukraine are facing that challenge after the death of one of their own.
News and notes: Wikimedia chapters and communities challenge Commons' URAA policy Following a trend started by Wikimedia Israel, Wikimedia Argentina has published an open letter challenging the recent deletion of hundreds of images from the Commons under its policy on URAA-restored copyrights, relating to the United States' 1994 Uruguay Round Agreements Act.
Traffic report: Snow big deal The 2014 Winter Olympics had more of an impact on the Top 25 than the Top 10, which had to shoulder old stalwarts like the death list, Reddit threads, TV shows and the eternal presence of Facebook; still, with four slots, it's the most searched topic on the list.
Traffic report: Brinksmen on the brink There's nothing like a good old bit of Cold War nostalgia, combined with a suitably scary international incident, to focus our attention on the real world. That said, nothing could stem our outpouring of affection for the beloved comedian Harold Ramis, whose death managed to top the week in the face of those international concerns.
News and notes: Wikipedia Library finding success in matching contributors with sources This week, the Signpost caught up with the Wikipedia Library (TWL), which aims to connect reference resources with Wikipedia editors who can use them to improve articles. Funded through the Wikimedia Foundation's Individual Engagement Grants program, TWL has a new "visiting scholars" initiative and a microgrants program in the works.
Featured content: Full speed ahead for the WikiCup The WikiCup competition is ongoing, while six articles, three lists, and ten pictures were promoted to "featured" status of the English Wikipedia this week.
WikiProject report: Article Rescue Squadron This week, the Signpost delved into the English Wikipedia's Article Rescue Squadron.
News and notes: Wikimedians celebrate International Women's Day, Women's History Month Wikimedians around the world gathered to celebrate Women's History Month and the associated International Women's Day by holding editathons. If you lived in the United Kingdom, you had the opportunity to attend Wikimedia UK's event at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, part of University College London and host to one of the largest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese artifacts in the world.
Traffic report: War and awards An intensely busy week, as a confluence of celebratory, curious and urgent topics pushed typical residents like Facebook and Deaths in 2014 out of the top ten entirely.
Featured content: Ukraine burns Five articles, two lists, and 52 pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
WikiProject report: Russian WikiProject Entomology This week, we interviewed Anaxibia from the Russian-language Entomology WikiProject.
